finding that a New York law requiring out-of-state liquor producers to file monthly affirmation that prices offered to New York wholesalers were no higher than the lowest prices offered to wholesalers in other states was unconstitutional where it had the effect of forcing producers to stop offering certain promotional pricing to wholesalers outside of New York
How later courts described this case
- finding that a New York law requiring out-of-state liquor producers to file monthly affirmation that prices offered to New York wholesalers were no higher than the lowest prices offered to wholesalers in other states was unconstitutional where it had the effect of forcing producers to stop offering certain promotional pricing to wholesalers outside of New York
- finding statute that required distillers to post prices at the beginning of each month and did not permit sale for lower prices in other states controlled extraterritorial commerce because it “forc[ed] a merchant to seek regulatory approval in one State before undertaking a transaction in another”
- stating that state statutes are struck down if they favor in-state economic interests over out-of-state, or if they discriminate against interstate commerce or if they simply regulate interstate commerce directly, whether or not they discriminate
- recognizing that “no clear line separat[es]” state regulation that is per se invalid and activity subject to Pike balancing, and stating that “the critical consideration is the overall effect of the statute on both local and interstate activity”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*586 Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion (except for its footnote 6), but I would go further and overrule Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc. v. Hostetter, 384 U. S. 35 (1966). Seagram is now a relic of the past. It was decided when affirmation statutes were comparatively new and long before the proliferation of overlapping and potentially conflicting affirmation statutes that has taken place in the last two decades. I see no principled distinction that can be drawn for constitutional analysis between New York’s current prospective statute and the same State’s retroactive statute upheld in Seagram, and I doubt very much whether any Member of this Court would be able to perceive one. Either type, despite one’s best efforts at fine-tuning, operates to affect out-of-state transactions and violates the Commerce Clause. Our failure to overrule Seagram now merely preserves uncertainty and will breed or necessitate further litigation. We should face reality and overrule Seagram.